


Crowley, Anthony J. [Title Unknown]. Single, [Publisher Unknown], 1969.

by acetheticallyy (patrickcorbins)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Pining, Resolved Romantic Tension, lots of waxing poetic about the nature of humanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 08:18:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19372834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrickcorbins/pseuds/acetheticallyy
Summary: He can’t be so sure that it’s not just an excuse to spend more time together, but then again, that’s probably just him projecting.(It’s usually just him projecting, in his experience.)





	Crowley, Anthony J. [Title Unknown]. Single, [Publisher Unknown], 1969.

**1969, JUNE**

There’s a young couple sitting near them, arms brushing against each other surreptitiously as they talk. Every time their shoulders bump together, they glance in the opposite direction in an attempt to hide their childish grins, color rising to their cheeks and lingering. By the time the flush starts to leave, something starts it right back up again. The brush of the back of a hand, maybe, or getting caught staring while the other was previously unaware.

Crowley maybe can’t help the soft smile that turns up at the corners of his lips when he notices them. For all he was supposed to be promoting sin and destruction, he’s always had a certain soft spot for young love.

“Well what are you smiling about?” Aziraphale asks.

Crowley considers lying, but he’s never been too terribly good at lying to Aziraphale. Instead he just gestures in the general direction of the couple. Aziraphale is an angel, surely he’ll get it.

Aziraphale tilts his head to the side, considering. “I don’t get it.”

Crowley blinks. Sure, Aziraphale had the tendency to be quite dense about things every now and again, but never usually any more so than a particularly buttery pound cake. _His_ side was supposed to be the one that promoted this stuff after all. What was there to not get?

“Well,” Crowley stutters. “Look at them!”

Aziraphale looks.

“I still don’t get it.”

And at this point, Aziraphale is either acting stupid on purpose, or he truly doesn’t know what’s so spectacular about a couple of adolescent humans finding each other nice to be around. Either way, it looks like he isn’t about to let it go until Crowley provides an acceptable answer. This could take anywhere from five minutes and a promise of lunch to three weeks and several bottles of miracled vintage wine. Crowley hopes for the former but expects the latter—that’s generally how it goes, between the two of them. He can’t be so sure that it’s not just an excuse to spend more time together, but then again, that’s probably just him projecting.

(It’s usually just him projecting, in his experience.)

“Ngh, ahh, you know…” He trails off in his explanation, letting the words dissolve into nonsense syllables while he struggles to find a way to accurately describe what he means without sounding profoundly ridiculous. “Hands, touching hands,” he continues with a shrug, trying to look casual as he squints into the sun to avoid eye contact. “Reaching out…touching me, touching you, I don’t know angel, what do you want me to say? Don’t make me explain it, it’s just nice is all.”

The real reason is much more complicated than that. It’s that, for all that Heaven preaches about love and for all that Hell preaches about freedom, neither place seems to have very much of either. Humanity, however, they seemed to have found both. And they seemed to have combined it perfectly.

Sure they have their problems, and they don’t always use it in a way that they should, but at the very heart of it all, at the base of their creation, is the innate desire to love and be loved in return.

And they give it so _freely_. A hand brushing over the knuckles of another here, an arm slung almost carelessly over a set of shoulders there, so casual it looks like it doesn’t mean anything except for the fact that it means _everything_.

It means comfort, trust. It means reassurance and grounding and the steadying knowledge that you have someone behind you, someone who cares.

Angels and demons, they weren’t built for that. They have the freedom to do so, they have the _love_ to do so, but they just don’t—they don’t see what’s so important. Humans, though…humans were _made_ to love, in a way that that angels have never known. Made to be _free_ in a way different to what it means to those down below.

And with it, they do this:

They grab hands under the table at dinner, sharing the moment like it’s a secret. They put a gentle hand on your shoulder when you look unwell, offering up some of their strength through their touch. They high five and they shake hands and they hug, a million different little excuses to pass on such a simple comfort. And it’s _reflexive_. They don’t even notice they’re doing it, don’t even quite understand _why_.

Aziraphale does it, too. He doesn’t notice it, either.

A hand curling around Crowley’s briefly as he passes a bottle of wine across the coffee table, static buzzing between their fingertips; legs carelessly slung over Crowley’s lap on the couch in the back of the bookshop after lunch, a sleepy, trusting weight holding him steady; shoulders rubbing together as they walk too close on the sidewalk, too early in the morning for the hustle and bustle of people going to and from work to be a worthwhile excuse; fingers gripping onto Crowley’s arm, applying gentle pressure, when he remembers something he’d wanted to tell him, eyes glittering when he speaks. Crowley doesn’t think about it too much, except for that he does. And every time it kills him.

Aziraphale is nothing _but_ love, in a way that Heaven isn’t, in a way that other angels most decidedly aren’t—in a way that even _humans_ aren’t. For other angels, it’s a duty. For humans, it’s an expectation intrinsic to their way of life, that they will give and accept love, to the point where they cease to be wholly aware of its existence.

For Aziraphale, though. For him, it seems almost effortless. Yes, he has a bit of a mean streak running through him and yes he acts like kind of an asshole more often than not, but for the people he cares about, the people who _deserve_ it? It’s like he doesn’t even have to think about it—and maybe he doesn’t. In fact, Crowley is _sure_ he doesn’t. Because it’s been there since the beginning, warm and unwavering, this natural instinct he seems to have to _care_ , to protect. Giving away parts of himself, getting into trouble, just for the sole purpose of keeping the people he cares for safe.

If he did think about it at all, Crowley thinks, maybe he wouldn’t be so damned _stupid_. Maybe he would stop giving so freely, maybe he would protect himself just a little more. But he doesn’t. Aziraphale doesn’t seem to work that way, and Manchester help him, Crowley loves him all the more for it.

In Crowley’s more vulnerable moments, he lets himself think that maybe this applies to him, too. That maybe when Aziraphale reaches out to remove Crowley’s sunglasses while he’s falling asleep in an armchair in the corner of the bookshop, clicking his tongue in disapproval as he folds them gently and sets them to rest on a side table, soft breaths ruffling strands of hair as he reaches around to rearrange the pillows behind Crowley’s head even though any crick in his neck could be easily miracled away in the morning—maybe it means the same thing.

Softer, maybe, more familiar. But still the same. He hopes so, at least.

Crowley doesn’t let himself hope like that very often.

Instead, he fakes being asleep when Aziraphale’s fingers brush light and careful over his temples and he pretends. Pretends that this is enough. Pretends that this is more than he ever thought he’d get to have, anyway, and that it’s _okay_. Because it has to be. That’s just how it is.

Demons aren’t supposed to love, at least not like he does. Not this all-encompassing ache in his chest that burns hot with every touch, every stolen glance. Not the way that humans do, with careful touches and a grounding presence. Not the way Aziraphale does.

He supposes he doesn’t _quite_ love the way Aziraphale does. Because Crowley, he _does_ notice. With every unnecessary beat in his chest, however much he tries to ignore it, he _feels_ it. A touch to the shoulder means “I’m here, don’t worry,” and a bemused quirk of the lips in the direction of a young couple on a first date means “despite my supposed inherent nature, I could never go so far as to ruin this; with all that I am and may be, I swear this will never end.”

A warm smile as they knock their glasses together for a toast means “I love you so much I don’t rightly know how I’m still standing.” The careful way he removes his barriers—sunglasses, defense mechanisms, and all: “I trust you. I want to trust you. _Please_ let me trust you.”

Crowley must be leaking feelings out of his ears, at this point, because then something happens. It’s like Aziraphale reads between the lines of Crowley’s half-hearted explanation right down to the real answer hiding beneath it all. Aziraphale always has been good at reading him, even when Crowley wishes he wasn’t.

Staring deep into his eyes, straight through the shade in front of them, something shifts. It’s like something clicks into the place in his head—Crowley can see the exact moment that Aziraphale _understands_. It’s equal parts terrifying and invigorating.

Well. Maybe seventy-five percent terrifying and twenty-five percent invigorating, but who’s keeping track.

(Crowley is keeping track, and it’s more like _eighty_ -five percent terrifying and _fifteen_ percent invigorating, actually.)

“Oh.”

 _Oh_.

The word echoes in his hears, settling deep into his brain. _Oh_. There’s nothing terribly meaningful about it, not really. Just one syllable, not much more than a letter of the alphabet, and yet.

And yet.

It feels like the ground swells beneath him, makes him unsteady on his feet. Aziraphale reaches a hand out to grasp his arm, grounding him without even realizing he needed any steadying. Instinctive. Reflexive. Just like always. Crowley’s heart gives a hard, useless thud in his chest.

Was this what a heart attack was like? Could he even _get_ heart attacks? Statistically speaking, based on his general diet and daily habits he should have had one by now, if it were at all possible, so maybe not. That being said, if there were ever an appropriate time for it to happen it would likely be now, he thinks.

Crowley has never allowed himself to hope before, not for anything and _especially_ not for something like this, but he can feel it spreading without his permission, warming him from halo to hellfire. Something about the way it’s said sparks something.

 _Oh._ Like “oh, _that’s_ what it’s like.” Like “oh, you’re right I’ve never noticed before.” Like “oh, is that what you feel when I touch you?”

Like “oh, that’s how I feel about you, too.”

Oh, indeed.

“Yeah,” Crowley says, and it’s barely a breath, barely a word at all.

 _Yeah_. Like “yeah, isn’t it wonderful?” Like “yeah, it is, and it kills me that you don’t notice.” Like “yeah, I’m glad that you figured it out.”

Like “yeah, I love you.”

Yeah, indeed.

For something that seems so terribly monumental, nothing culminates the way Crowley suspects. A tilt of the head here, a shifting of a hand there, sliding gently along the length of his arm until the palm comes into contact with his own, clasping tightly around his fingers. A knowing smile. A tickle on the back of his neck, something that only ever happens when he’s nervous. Conversation resumes. The world turns. The tickle on the back of his neck fades away. No one tries to kill them.

They go home, they talk, they kiss. They stay up and talk some more until Crowley, accustomed to sleeping, starts drifting in and out of consciousness. Crowley has always loved sleeping, spent the better part of a century doing so, once, but right about now he’s starting to regret letting it become a routine. He stays awake long enough to feel the slide of Aziraphale’s hands against his temples, this time accompanied by the soft press of lips to the crown of his head.

The sun rises in the morning and everything is the different and yet all too familiar. When he blinks his eyes open to see Aziraphale right up next to him—one hand combing through his hair, a book in the other—he decides he doesn’t regret letting sleep become a routine, anymore.

A calm, steadying hand still greets him every now and again, but this time it has intent. This time he _knows_. This time, it’s real.

*

Somewhere in the city a man replays the words he heard earlier over and over in his head. “Hands, touching hands. Reaching out, touching me, touching you.” He hums a few bars, scratches a few more lines onto the pad of paper sitting in front of him. It could use more work, probably, but he thinks he has something.

A soft crescendo, building into a blaring horn section. A few references to American royalty here and there to get people interested. It’s a long shot, perhaps, but he’s sure it could be a hit if he finds the right people.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to make a joke about crowley accidentally writing sweet caroline but then robin said pining and then I said what if I projected all my feelings about how the nature of humans is to love and be loved in returned onto crowley and now it’s this! as always shoutout to robin for the cheerleading and shoutout as well to the theology unit in sixth grade social studies that allowed me to develop all these hot takes on human nature
> 
> (I could’ve called this the summer of ’69, but that felt like too much dad rock for one 2k word fic)


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